Have you thought about the financial legacy you plan to leave for your spouse, children, and/or grandchildren? Do you hope to provide a significant bequest to a favorite charity? Have those assets ever decreased quickly due to external factors? For example, a sudden market downturn, unexpected financial expenses, living longer than expected, and tax law changes can all decrease the financial legacy you want to leave behind.

Just as it’s usually an exercise in futility to try to “time the market” or anticipate tax code changes, we all face uncertainty about when we’ll pass away. What if that time coincides with a market downturn or other unforeseeable events that leave your family or charity of choice with less than you intended?

Life Insurance

One possible solution to that “what if” problem is using life insurance to help protect your legacy. A correctly-structured life policy’s death benefit can be there for your family, beneficiaries, or charity of choice, no matter when it is needed. This may help reduce the possibility that any party will be adversely impacted by a market downturn, healthcare expenses, and other unexpected costs that may occur.

The death benefit is typically tax-free, so changes to future income tax rates and laws should not reduce it. You decide who your beneficiaries are, and how the proceeds will be divided among them. All of this can add some certainty to an uncertain future.

Long Term Care Insurance

Long-Term Care (LTC) insurance is another important tool to help protect your financial legacy, in both good times and bad. It is a cost-effective way of covering the significant risk of the rapidly increasing cost of care (whether delivered at home, in an assisted living facility, or in a nursing home).

Affluent individuals sometimes consider “self-insuring” against LTC costs, hoping the LTC need never arises, and planning to spend down only some of their assets if it does occur.

However, the quickly rising cost of care (plus the uncertainty of how long you might need it) makes the potential drain on assets quite significant. For example, the average annual cost of a private room in a nursing home in the U.S. in 2021 was $108,408, That cost is expected to increase by just under 30% in 10 years.^*

It is also important to consider that if the need for LTC services should occur during or shortly after a market downturn, the effect on your portfolio and legacy could be far worse without LTC insurance.

Protecting your financial future, and that of your loved ones, is a crucial part of your overall financial plan. The selection of life insurance and LTC coverage that best fit you, your family and your budget can be a complicated process.

Keep in mind that in addition to the benefits these solutions offer, there are also risks, including:

• Some life insurance solutions contain an element of market risk. All life insurance solutions should be reviewed annually for account performance. Poor performance of the underlying investments may cause a drop in the policy’s account value, which could require additional premiums to keep the policy in effect as designed.  
• LTC insurance can be expensive and if not designed properly, may only provide limited benefits that may not be adequate to cover all long-term costs. The purchase of any kind of long-term care insurance is managing against a risk that may never occur.

Your Janney Financial Advisor can sort through the many available options and recommend a plan that serves your needs and your family’s, in good times and bad, today and tomorrow.